In 1859, a reti­red rail­way con­duc­tor named Edwin Dra­ke struck oil in a tiny Penn­syl­va­nia town cal­led Titu­svil­le. Back then, cru­de was refi­ned for use in kero­se­ne lamps. Soon, the Dra­ke Well was pum­ping hun­dreds of thou­sands of bar­rels of oil. The Petro­leum Age was under way.
Yet few Ame­ri­cans know that a deca­de befo­re this ama­zing disco­ve­ry, the world’s fir­st com­mer­cial oil well had alrea­dy been plum­bed on a penin­su­la far from Penn­syl­va­nia, a penin­su­la who­se name means “pla­ce of sal­ty waters” — a hook of land that juts into the bri­ny Caspian Sea.
Land­loc­ked by Iran, Turk­me­ni­stan, Kaza­kh­stan, Rus­sia, Azer­bai­jan — names that Ame­ri­cans the­se days might asso­cia­te with an abun­dan­ce of natu­ral resour­ces — the Caspian Sea is actual­ly a lake, but one that hap­pens to blan­ket some of the world’s lar­ge­st oil and gas fields.
To spend time in any of the­se coun­tries, four of which once belon­ged to the Soviet Union, is to see the names such as Che­vron and BP embla­zo­ned on eve­ry­thing from sta­tio­ne­ry to ship­ping con­tai­ners and to won­der, how did Western com­pa­nies get here?
Ste­ve LeVi­ne, an ener­gy cor­re­spon­dent for the Wall Street Jour­nal who cove­red the Caspian region from 1992 to 2003, answers this que­stion in sur­pri­sing detail in “The Oil and the Glo­ry.” Chan­ce mee­tings on pla­nes, Con­nec­ti­cut man­sions, CIA debrie­fings, Carib­bean yacht crui­ses, Gul­fstream jets — all the­se are set pie­ces in LeVine’s account of how, long befo­re it was offi­cial poli­cy, Western oil­men “instinc­ti­ve­ly gra­sped the essen­ce of déten­te” with the Evil Empi­re, and found ways to open it up for business.
Oil dea­lings bet­ween the West and Soviet Union star­ted as far back as 1928, when Jose­ph Sta­lin laun­ched a five-year plan to revi­ve Soviet indu­stry and “una­ba­shed­ly employed Ame­ri­cans and Euro­peans” to deve­lop the oil fields off the Caspian Sea.
Later, after World War II, when the Allies’ rela­tion­ship with Sta­lin sou­red and the Cold War began, it took midd­le­men, such as a flam­boyant Tur­kish Arme­nian emi­gre in Boston and his pro­te­ge, a wily Cali­for­nia social clim­ber, to open doors for Western oil­men in an other­wi­se clo­sed Soviet Union.
That Cali­for­nian was Jim Gif­fen, who gol­fed and glad-han­ded his way to a job as chief advi­ser to Che­vron, which even­tual­ly signed a momen­tous deal to drill and mana­ge day-to-day ope­ra­tions at a “super­giant” oil field cal­led Ten­giz, just off Kaza­kh­stan in the Caspian Sea — and keep 20 per­cent of the profits.
Gif­fen see­med to know all the right hands to sha­ke in late 1980s Moscow, espe­cial­ly after Soviet Pre­si­dent Mikhail Gor­ba­chev lega­li­zed joint ven­tu­res with the West, and later in Kaza­kh­stan, when it and other repu­blics gai­ned inde­pen­den­ce and were able to nego­tia­te oil deals on their own.
Throu­ghout that hea­dy, chao­tic time, Gif­fen had a par­ti­cu­lar abi­li­ty to make it appear as if his pro­po­sals for Ame­ri­can com­pa­nies to exploit Soviet oil fields had the bles­sing of Washing­ton. The domi­nant fea­tu­re in Giffen’s New York offi­ce, LeVi­ne wri­tes, was pho­to­gra­phs of Gif­fen with key players in the U.S. govern­ment and big oil, inclu­ding one of Con­do­leez­za Rice, who then was on Chevron’s board of directors.
Yet even Gif­fen couldn’t have pre­dic­ted how swif­tly the Soviet Union would col­lap­se — or how fier­ce­ly his allies in Moscow would try to thwart Western ven­tu­res in the new­ly inde­pen­dent, post-Soviet republics.
The Che­vron-Ten­giz deal in Kaza­kh­stan, for instan­ce, got much more com­pli­ca­ted when the com­pa­ny was for­ced to trans­port its cru­de throu­gh old, small Soviet pipe­li­nes, whe­re high-qua­li­ty Ten­giz oil had to mix with a blend of lower-qua­li­ty Rus­sian cru­de, and Rus­sia char­ged high tariffs for the privilege.
So began a poli­cy shift in the Uni­ted Sta­tes — away from ope­ning up to the enti­re post-Soviet region in favor of exploi­ting Caspian oil whi­le con­tai­ning Rus­sia. But this poli­cy shift did not come easi­ly, LeVi­ne reports, espe­cial­ly given the influen­ce over then-Pre­si­dent Bill Clin­ton of his long­ti­me friend and depu­ty secre­ta­ry of sta­te, Stro­be Tal­bott, who belie­ved that the awa­ke­ning giant, Rus­sia, must be appea­sed at all costs.
Even­tual­ly, thou­gh, mid­le­vel players in the admi­ni­stra­tion were able to make the case that it was in America’s inte­re­st to sup­port an oil pipe­li­ne from East to West that cir­cum­ven­ted Rus­sia, and archri­val Iran. The plan was to start the pipe­li­ne at the Caspian, tra­vel over the moun­tains of new­ly inde­pen­dent Geor­gia and end at the Tur­kish port of Cey­han, on the Medi­ter­ra­nean Sea.
LeVi­ne meti­cu­lou­sly recoun­ts the pro­cess of get­ting this pipe­li­ne built — a pro­cess that span­ned more than a deca­de and seve­ral admi­ni­stra­tions in a han­d­ful of coun­tries — pain­ting a rare pic­tu­re of how a few deter­mi­ned poli­cy­ma­kers can alter the geo­po­li­ti­cal map.
That level of detail seems gra­tui­tous the few times LeVi­ne talks to town­speo­ple in the­se far-flung repu­blics, peo­ple without indoor plum­bing who gai­ned lit­tle from the oil boom. The­se pas­sa­ges seem too quick and too for­ced, as does a chap­ter on a fai­led Uno­cal plan to build a pipe­li­ne across Afgha­ni­stan. The only real scoop here is that the com­pa­ny bought and instal­led a fax machi­ne for the Taliban.
Other­wi­se, “The Oil and the Glo­ry” is a fine, grip­ping read, one that takes us to a once-for­bid­den land, and sho­ws us how many others have gone befo­re us — and prospered.

The Caspian Sea region’s oil was com­mer­cia­li­zed in 1886, when Zey­na­lab­din Tagiyev—known as the Azer­bai­ja­ni Eunuch Maker—struck a gusher that spewed more cru­de into the sea than all the world’s func­tio­nal wells were pro­du­cing at the time. As LeVine’s enga­ging account details, the area has sin­ce been disco­ve­red, plun­de­red, and for­got­ten time and again. But now, with the ope­ning of the Baku-Cey­han pipe­li­ne in spring 2006, the Caspian may well be the key to our ener­gy inde­pen­den­ce from the Midd­le East. A for­mer Wall Street Jour­nal wri­ter, LeVi­ne brings this all ali­ve by intro­du­cing us to regio­nal strong­men, Ame­ri­can fixers, Western oil-com­pa­ny exe­cu­ti­ves, and sha­dy ener­gy tra­ders who, sin­ce the brea­kup of the Soviet empi­re, have jostled for Cen­tral Asia’s enor­mous oil pri­ze whi­le Mother Rus­sia looms mena­cin­gly in the back­ground. The deft poli­ti­cal por­trait of this stra­te­gic, vola­ti­le area makes the book essen­tial rea­ding, but it’s LeVine’s fine wri­ting that makes it a pleasure.

Hard­ly any topic has been more chewed over in recent years than the poli­tics of Caspian Sea oil and gas. But behind the repor­ted head but­ting of govern­men­ts, the play-by-play over pipe­li­nes, and an end­less stream of aca­de­mic con­fe­ren­ces, a bare-knuc­kle, swa­sh­buc­kling dra­ma has pit­ched and rol­led, with oil­men vying for a share of the­se riches. LeVi­ne, a cor­re­spon­dent for The Wall Street Jour­nal, has done due dili­gen­ce in fra­ming both the histo­ri­cal and the con­tem­po­ra­ry poli­ti­cal set­tings, but the treat is in the roi­ling tale of the gam­bles, bra­va­do, and maneu­ve­ring of the deal­ma­kers. James Gif­fen, the impre­sa­rio of Kazakhstan’s oil sur­ge, now under indict­ment in U.S. court, plays a cen­tral role, but the­re are many others in the cast. Like a good sce­na­ri­st, LeVi­ne deve­lops the cha­rac­ters for each seg­ment befo­re pro­cee­ding with the plot. For peo­ple who liked Michael Dou­glas in Wall Street, here is an even more sub­tle and com­plex movie script.

The disin­te­gra­tion of the Soviet Union in the ear­ly 1990s unlea­shed a modern-day Klon­di­ke in the bleak but oil-soa­ked region around the Caspian Sea. Sto­ries of how com­pa­nies such as Che­vron (CVX ) and Exxon­Mo­bil (XOM ) gai­ned access to the huge oil fields of Kaza­kh­stan and Azer­bai­jan have lea­ked out in dribs and drabs, but now Ste­ve LeVi­ne has gathe­red the who­le Wild East tale in one can­ny and enter­tai­ning book, The Oil and the Glo­ry: The Pur­suit of Empi­re and For­tu­ne on the Caspian Sea.
LeVi­ne, who spent many years in Rus­sia and its nei­gh­bors as a cor­re­spon­dent for The Wall Street Jour­nal and other publi­ca­tions, has fil­led his volu­me with intri­guing, some­ti­mes daun­ting cha­rac­ters. Lud­vig Nobel, a 19th cen­tu­ry entre­pre­neur and mem­ber of the famed Swe­dish fami­ly, orga­ni­zed the Caspian oil tra­de much as John D. Roc­ke­fel­ler did the U.S. busi­ness. Zey­na­lab­din Tagiyev, an Aze­ri oil baron of the 1880s, once orde­red ser­van­ts to castra­te a rival for his wife’s affec­tions. Marat Mana­fov, Azerbaijan’s oil nego­tia­tor during the 1990s, shook up mee­tings by poin­ting a pistol at Western oil executives.
More impor­tant, the book zooms in on the dubious prac­ti­ces, intri­gue, and poli­ti­cal arm-twi­sting that can be a key part of deals in deve­lo­ping nations, whe­re ever more of the oil busi­ness takes pla­ce. In Kaza­kh­stan in the 1990s, lar­ge sums from oil com­pa­nies alle­ged­ly ended up in the Swiss bank accoun­ts of the country’s Pre­si­dent. At the same time, in Azer­bai­jan, a $230 mil­lion “signing bonus” paid by a con­sor­tium of Western com­pa­nies was almo­st instan­tly disper­sed “to off­sho­re accoun­ts in coun­tries with lax ban­king laws,” accor­ding to a Penn­zoil offi­cial quo­ted by LeVine.
LeVi­ne also under­sco­res the inten­se­ly poli­ti­cal natu­re of oil. Both Rus­sia and the U.S. employed govern­ment muscle to influen­ce which com­pa­nies gai­ned access to Caspian coun­tries’ reser­ves and the rou­tes throu­gh which it would be expor­ted. Al Gore tried to use his Vice-Pre­si­den­tial clout in Chevron’s favor again­st the mave­rick Dutch oil tra­der John Deuss. Deuss, play­ing a cle­ver but ulti­ma­te­ly losing game, was try­ing to par­lay the bac­king of the Sul­tan of Oman into a lock on the vital pipe­li­ne rou­te out of Kazakhstan.
Much less inte­re­sting than such cha­rac­ters, in LeVine’s tel­ling, are the oil com­pa­ny exe­cu­ti­ves, who are bur­de­ned both by a sen­se of enti­tle­ment and a tin ear for local poli­tics. BP’s John Bro­w­ne, then head of the company’s explo­ra­tion and pro­duc­tion, did impress his Kaza­kh hosts by gul­ping down a local delicacy—a sheep’s eye. But, says LeVi­ne, Che­vron CEO Ken­neth Derr “lite­ral­ly tur­ned his back” on Kaza­kh­stan Pre­si­dent Nur­sul­tan Nazar­bayev when he asked for help in buil­ding a soc­cer sta­dium for his new capi­tal, Asta­na. Nazar­bayev, who­se oil Derr cove­ted, “was sui­ta­bly flab­ber­ga­sted and insulted.”
A key figu­re in much of the Caspian intri­gue was one James H. Gif­fen, the son of a Stock­ton (Calif.) haber­da­sher who beca­me a player in the hard-to-pene­tra­te world of U.S.-Soviet tra­de. In the mid-1980s, Gif­fen con­vin­ced Soviet lea­der Mikhail Gor­ba­chev that U.S. busi­ness could help cure his country’s ailing eco­no­my. The apex of Giffen’s career: the deal he bro­ke­red giving Che­vron exclu­si­ve rights to Kazakhstan’s Ten­giz, a gem of an oil field that is pro­ba­bly among the world’s 10 lar­ge­st. In return, says LeVi­ne, Gif­fen got 7.5 cen­ts on each bar­rel Che­vron pro­du­ced, poten­tial­ly tens of mil­lions of dollars.
For years Gif­fen, a fre­quent sour­ce for Busi­nes­sWeek repor­ters, master­ful­ly jug­gled dif­fe­rent inte­rests, inclu­ding the Kaza­khs, the oil com­pa­nies, and the CIA. He and Nazar­bayev “some­ti­mes retrea­ted into the coun­try­si­de for days at a time, accom­pa­nied by young Kaza­kh women and well sup­plied with whi­skey.” But his influen­ce waned, and in 2003 he was arre­sted at New York’s John F. Ken­ne­dy Inter­na­tio­nal Air­port on char­ges of fun­ne­ling $77 mil­lion in bri­bes from U.S. oil com­pa­nies to Nazar­bayev and other Kaza­kh insiders.
He still awai­ts trial, insi­sting that he had been, in LeVine’s words, “a U.S. agent in Kazakhstan…in one of the most stra­te­gic regions in the world.” Wha­te­ver hap­pens to him, the spot is sure to spa­wn other outra­geous cha­rac­ters to take his place.

For well over a cen­tu­ry, the Caspian basin has been “the next big thing” for ener­gy, a poten­tial­ly weal­thy region crip­pled only by its inac­ces­si­bi­li­ty. This was the result of tech­no­lo­gy in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, when oil was expor­ted on mule­back, and later ideo­lo­gy, when the Bol­she­viks sei­zed Western asse­ts, and the Sovie­ts later denied wester­ners access only until they despe­ra­te­ly nee­ded cash. Sin­ce “The Fall,” the mad scram­ble for the region’s oil and gas has rea­ched a fever pitch, resul­ting in the destruc­tion of seve­ral lar­ge com­pa­nies, the acqui­si­tion of others, and an incre­di­ble degree of poli­ti­cal and com­mer­cial back-dea­ling and betrayal.
This sto­ry, which most only know in a gene­ral sen­se (if at all), is the sto­ry LeVi­ne lays out. The pri­ma­ry author of a blog which shares its name with his book, LeVi­ne was a regio­nal cor­re­spon­dent for the New York Times and the Alma­ty bureau chief for the Wall Street Jour­nal. Such a posi­tion gave him key access to many of the players he describes—from the hila­riou­sly pom­pous midd­le­men like James Gif­fen to heads of sta­te like Nur­sul­tan Nazarbayev—and a bra­cing, spell­bin­ding nar­ra­ti­ve full of intri­gue to tie toge­ther an incre­di­bly com­plex story.
Whi­le the broa­de­st stro­kes of this sto­ry aren’t espe­cial­ly new (regu­lar rea­ders of most blogs or news accoun­ts of Cen­tral Asia won’t find world-alte­ring sur­pri­ses), LeVi­ne adds value by not only pla­cing the cur­rent geo­po­li­ti­cal wran­gle in a broad histo­ri­cal con­text, but by offe­ring deep insights into what each of the players was thin­king, as well as all of the mes­sy back room nego­tia­tions that crea­ted the modern Caspian. This is whe­re his access as a jour­na­li­st real­ly comes out to shi­ne: he had the bene­fit of col­lec­ting inter­views and notes over more than a deca­de, all of which allo­wed him to craft what could be a defi­ni­ti­ve histo­ry not just of the strug­gle for Caspian oil, but of the men who strug­gled for it. New cha­rac­ters, mostly if not always unheard of pop in and out of the sto­ry, some­ti­mes chan­ging it but always adding intri­gue. For exam­ple, the erra­tic beha­vior of Aze­ri nego­tia­tor Marat Mana­fov, remem­be­red mostly for dra­wing a pistol on oil exe­cu­ti­ves at a posh hotel, was mind-bog­gling to read, espe­cial­ly in such a serious con­text and with such huge stakes.
Much like Ste­ve Coll’s master­pie­ce on the CIA-al-Qae­da strug­gle throu­ghout the 80s and 90s, this insi­der access is incre­di­bly valua­ble, but only gets you so far: at some point, the rea­li­za­tion sets in that this is everyone’s per­so­nal inter­pre­ta­tion and spin of what hap­pe­ned and what they were thin­king. Whi­le it’s true that this the case of most histo­ries, the relian­ce on per­so­na­li­ty lea­ves big gaps that I wish could be fil­led in, most espe­cial­ly what was hap­pe­ning on the Rus­sian side. We learn a great deal about what the Clin­ton Whi­te Hou­se was thin­king (and inter­nal­ly deba­ting) during the mad rush of the 90s, much of what the major oil exe­cu­ti­ves were up to, and even a sur­pri­sing amount of the nor­mal­ly hyper-pri­va­te midd­le­men. The­re is keen insight into what the Aze­ris and Kaza­khs were try­ing to get. But the cove­ra­ge of Rus­sia felt odd­ly flat.
This isn’t much of a criticism—there are only so many peo­ple one can talk to, even over a deca­de, espe­cial­ly on a sub­ject as inten­se­ly sen­si­ti­ve (and espe­cial­ly so in Rus­sia) as oil rights and explo­ra­tion and poli­tics. But whi­le such an exer­ci­se gains one an incre­di­ble glimp­se into how the oil indu­stry ope­ra­tes, and more impor­tan­tly how it plays into natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal poli­tics, it can only go so far.
Indeed, whi­le this is a glo­rious histo­ry writ­ten in the vein of Hopkirk’s The Great Game, it is short on ana­ly­sis. Whi­le LeVi­ne rai­ses appro­pria­te and trou­bling questions—such as Russia’s relia­bi­li­ty as an hone­st bro­ker or tra­ding part­ner, and whe­ther America’s self-inser­tion into the region will be for good or ill—there’s not much here to help in answe­ring them.
The histo­ry, howe­ver, is indeed glo­rious. I found the ope­ning sec­tion, in which LeVi­ne details the fir­st Baku boom a cen­tu­ry ago, of incre­di­ble inte­re­st. Asi­de from the gau­dy exces­ses of the ori­gi­nal barons (the cur­rent ones are more discreet in how they blow mil­lions on luxu­ry), what was most stri­king was the incre­di­ble waste. This was some­thing even the con­tem­po­ra­ry Euro­peans, such as the descen­dan­ts of Alfred Nobel (who not only were the pri­ma­ry deve­lo­pers in Baku, but also inven­ted the modern oil tan­ker), found shoc­king. Wells would be tap­ped and left as gushers, spewing untold amoun­ts of wealth into the air and then into the ground, making eve­ry­thing a sou­py, use­less, toxic mess. This hor­ren­dous waste and pol­lu­tion, unfor­tu­na­te­ly, con­ti­nued throu­gh the Soviet era, right to the 1985 Ten­giz blo­wout that bur­ned for over a year. 85 miles away, 700-ft tall column of fla­me was visi­ble, and appa­ren­tly it was so hot water boi­led from near­ly 200 feet away.
There’s ano­ther untold sto­ry the­re, one perhaps wor­thy of fol­low up: the unbe­lie­va­ble envi­ron­men­tal dama­ge the Sovie­ts wrought, in Cen­tral Asia (mostly Kaza­kh­stan, as the Aral Sea, Semi­pa­la­tin­sk, and Ten­giz disa­sters may indi­ca­te), but across the enti­re USSR. Oil is a mes­say, dan­ge­rous industry—that much eve­ryo­ne can agree to (and the bat­tle over pre­ser­ving the wild­li­fe refu­ges off Sakha­lin speak to some long-over­due push back again­st rec­kless explo­ra­tion). But so is com­mu­ni­sm, both in the hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple sacri­fi­ced to its ideo­lo­gy last cen­tu­ry and the con­ti­nued lega­cy of the scars its land bears. LeVine’s book is an impor­tant part of this sto­ry, and is so well writ­ten it is worth rea­ding even if one has no inte­re­st on the sub­ject. But it is only a part of a much gran­der, and sad­der, story.